


Tomorrow

by Elsey8



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Study, Extended Metaphors, Freckles, M/M, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 15:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30141858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsey8/pseuds/Elsey8
Summary: He hides everything, Goro literally covers up his freckles and straightens his hair and wears contacts just to be as far from himself as he possibly can. But he’s still able to sit here and claim that he wants to be deserving of the way Akira looks at him as if he actually likes what he sees.Or;Goro looks at Akira, and Akira looks back.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 10
Kudos: 97





	Tomorrow

Goro has never really liked...himself. He wouldn’t call it hatred as much as this general dislike. 

It went past anything inside or out him, because in the end what did the way he looked or acted matter? 

The problem he had was always just  _ him.  _

It’s not as if he found himself unattractive, or a particularly nasty person. It’s not as if there was ever anything that was remarkable about him in the first place, ever since his birth all he’s ever been is just yet another bastard child growing up in a cruel world that was never meant for him. 

And then all he grew up into was an orphan, a liar, someone who...could be manipulated like he was. 

Like he always has been. 

And maybe he’s not entirely ugly, but what feature of his is true in the first place? He sculpts his face each morning to conform to each standard he sets for himself, he covers the parts of himself he doesn’t like every single time he knows he’ll be seeing another living human being. He can’t handle being  _ seen.  _

It makes everything in him tense, it makes him panic. 

Maybe that’s what intimidated him about Akira, from the very beginning. 

He felt seen, and that made him almost angry. Definitely scared him, that’s for sure. 

In the beginning he wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. Maybe that’s where the thesis and antithesis came from, the idea that he wanted to capture this boy’s attention no matter what. He wasn’t sure how to do it, so he just said the first thing that came to mind. Something to draw him in, something that made him seem smart and made them seem connected in a way. 

And the way Akira looked back at him, like he saw past the bullshit immediately. The way it always felt like that, the way every time Akira looked at him it was genuine. There was something real in his eyes, Akira was always like that. 

The worst part of it all is that Goro wants to deserve it. He really wants to deserve it, wants to be worth it, even though he knows that as he is he could never be worth a fraction of what Akira gives him. 

He hides everything, Goro literally covers up his freckles and straightens his hair and wears contacts just to be as far from himself as he possibly can. But he’s still able to sit here and claim that he wants to be deserving of the way Akira looks at him as if he actually likes what he sees. 

That should be ridiculous, preposterous, Goro should know better than that. By now, he should know that he’s already doomed. But he wants it anyway, desperately. 

He doesn’t know what to do with that, he doesn’t know how to deal with something like that when he’s never felt anything other than animosity towards every other human being he’s met. After his mother’s death, every single person he met was despicable. 

The foster families who took him in, the people who would pass by him every day, the everyday asshole who turned a blind eye to everything that was happening to him and around him. 

Nobody ever cared, and that made him bitter. That made him spiteful, it made him crave revenge until it all culminated into tracking his father down in a fit of rage and…

Goro doesn’t deserve to be seen as he is and still even tolerated. He’s turned into someone as worthy of despise as the people he used to hate with as much vitriol.

That’s why he just ignores it, for a while. For as long as he can, he tries to just push it out of his mind. Whenever Akira takes them out to do something, he doesn’t think about himself. He tries to just...focus on Akira, focus on what they’re doing, press the pain out of his mind until he just feels numb. But it doesn’t work forever. 

His fix was only ever going to be temporary, when Akira grins at him that way. The way it feels like a challenge, everything Akira does and says feels like he’s just challenging him with this hidden spark in his eyes. He plays so innocent while still so clearly doing it all on  _ purpose.  _

There’s just this little bit of satisfaction he senses from Akira every time he drags another piece of Goro into the light, kicking and screaming. 

It infuriates him. 

He knows it should probably feel good. It should probably be nice for him to be seen right through after a life of being in hiding. To know that there is, in fact, something beneath his mask in the moments he started to doubt that. 

It doesn’t feel good. 

It makes him feel sick, it makes him hate Akira, and it fills him with an overwhelming panic he can’t shake. When Akira looks at him from over a chess board, Goro wonders if his makeup hasn’t rubbed off. Is his hair curling? Are his eyes watering from his contacts? Is there something, anything, that can explain away how easily Akira is seeing him that isn’t just...an innate knowing? 

But there never is, that’s never the case. 

And that’s worse than anything else. 

He wants to be someone he isn’t ashamed of people seeing, someone he doesn’t need to protect so fiercely. He’s sick of holding his cards so close to his chest, even though he’s so close to his win. 

Who is he kidding, though? 

He should hate Akira, he wants to, he tried to. 

But in seeing Goro so clearly, Akira opened himself up to be seen in turn. 

Every time he offered up his compassion, his own experiences, his time, his energy. Goro saw him, he saw Akira in all these new lights. Akira never liked to be fully in the spotlight, he was always somehow shrouded, but in the bits that Goro did see he cared enough to build up a full picture. 

Seeing and being seen, that’s an experience that he’s never had before. 

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t know who he is, he doesn’t know what to make of anything around him, but there is something. There is that one thing. 

There is the fact that no matter how much he insists on it, no matter how badly he wants to, he doesn’t actually hate Akira. He couldn’t hate Akira, no matter how hard he tried to. 

Even though Akira should be everything he hates, even though Akira is the one he’s supposed to oppose, to kill. He doesn’t hate him, this uncontrollable feeling in him that’s always been hatred won’t work the way he wanted it to, just this once. 

Whatever is in him is new, terrifying, and paralyzing. 

Akira looks at Goro, and he looks back. There is understanding between the two of them, feeling and something just a little unexplainable. That connection is unlike any that Goro has formed so far in his life, and for the life of him he can’t be anything but scared of it. 

It all comes to its conclusion the night before the plan is supposed to be set in motion. The night before their final infiltration, before Akira is captured and Goro is meant to put a bullet between his eyes. Those eyes that always looked at him in kindness. Sometimes, when Goro sleeps, he dreams about how they’ll look bleeding crimson. 

He can’t sleep right now, though. And that’s not a new thing, Goro has always gotten pretty bad sleep. With the nightmares, the things to worry him, every bit of him that just screams that there are things to do that he can’t rest that he’s…

But there’s a very obvious reason here, why he can’t sleep tonight. Every time he closes his eyes, he just sees Akira. Nothing as morbid as seeing him dead, it’s worse than that. He sees his face, his eyes, his smile. He sees him alive, sitting across from him at the jazz club or over a chess board or taking a shot that definitely won’t land in billiards. The way his entire body had screamed sympathy when Goro shared pain with him, the way he always looked and  _ saw  _ when nobody else ever got to see. He feels every bit of guilt and dread building in him the longer he thinks of it, every passing second makes his stomach turn again. 

He’s been trying to tell him, as well as he can. There is nothing outright he can really say most of the time, no way other than small hints and pushes in the right direction. 

Nudging Akira towards a realization, a way to get him to just see it. See through Goro, one more time here, please get out of it. Please don’t die, and yet please don’t make Goro be the one to pull it back at the last second. 

Goro finally found another person he cares about, and he doesn’t know...he’s lost. 

So he goes to the only place he’s never felt lost. 

Akira looks at him like he was expecting him, when he opens the door to Leblanc for him. 

Actually, there’s already coffee in the pot(his favorite coffee)that he’s poured a mug of when he sits down. There’s a chess board set up in one of the booths, so that’s where the two of them sit across from one another. 

They’re quiet, for a while. 

They drink from their mugs, and Akira sets the board. Each click of the pieces against it brings about this feeling in Goro’s chest. 

He isn’t quite sure what to make of it yet, other than feeling ridiculously annoyed that Akira read him so easily. That the coffee is still hot, clearly freshly brewed as if Akira could call out down to the minute exactly what he would do. 

“Do you remember who played white last time?” Akira asks quietly. 

Goro remembers very well that he was white last time they played. He was white, they’d played a pretty bishop heavy game, but his own use of knights in the late game got him his win. It was a fairly long game for them, he thinks it was above thirty moves. Usually things are decided a lot earlier than that, one of them resigning once the gap becomes obvious. 

“I did,” Goro answers. 

Akira turns the board around, so the white pieces are on his side, and he sits back. 

“Rematch?” 

It’s always a rematch, never a new game for them. Each game feels like picking up where they left off, a direct continuation of this long running thing between them. Goro isn’t sure what to call it other than a game of their own making. 

They switch off on who goes first, and each of their wins is carefully recorded in either of their phones. They keep each other honest that way. 

“Your move, Joker,” Goro prompts, waving a hand. 

Akira moves immediately, easily. Their opening games are just the same as clockwork at this point, they favor the same first moves, and every move within the first couple of turns has an answer immediately. 

It’s like breathing. Akira’s king pawn to e4, Goro moves his own king pawn to meet him. Queen pawn to d3, his queen immediately comes out to meet Akira, this time all the way to h4. Then Akira’s bishop to e3, Goro’s queen pawn to d6, his knight to f3 and Goro’s bishop comes forward to e6. 

And then the board opens up to him. It opens up to them both, their give and take giving way to new strategies and ways to get in each other’s heads. Mistakes to make, pieces to take from one another, taunts to get on each other’s nerves.

Akira makes an early mistake, taking the first blood as one of Goro’s knights with his queen...only to get his queen snatched up by one of Goro’s pawns. He’d been cornered as is, too far into Goro’s territory, and hadn’t seen that actually Goro had  _ three  _ ways to punish him for that move, not just the two he’d clearly seen through. 

Akira swears under his breath, and Goro bites back his taunt because it’s clear he saw it just a second too late. Akira has played plenty of games without his queen, Akira is ever adaptable, he can’t be underestimated just for an early mistake. 

Because then again, Goro makes his own stretch of mistakes losing a bishop, two knights, and his queen when Akira goes on a bloodbath with his remaining bishop and one of his rooks. He keeps cornering Goro, making him decide between sacrifices, putting him in check just to make him waste a move. 

Akira continues being absolutely brutal with his rook, and Goro turns around to use his more effectively. Akira has a piece advantage, what with him having stronger pieces left, but Goro is still dominating the center of the board and if it turns into a pawn race then he’ll have an advantage. 

Admittedly, the whole thing is rather exhilarating. It is their perfect push and pull, their duality personified in one of the best games they’ve played. They’re making a lot of mistakes, but that’s coming across to make it a lot closer, forcing them to be more clever with every misstep. 

They get down to the wire, about five pieces each as they chase one another around the board. It feels like as much as Goro tries to attack, Akira has an answer to avoid it. 

Goro makes the mistake. He’s the one who budges on positioning, not even noticing the error until Akira swoops in to take his last rook. He plucks it off the board with a large grin.

“Is it forfeit?” Akira asks, rook clutched in his palm as he lays his chin atop his hands. “Hm, Detective?” 

It is, but to that kind of taunt he won’t back down. He will let it play out, even if Akira’s win is inevitable. He won’t admit that, not tonight. 

“Not yet,” he snaps. 

Akira easily sweeps his last pawn off the board, and even Goro taking his rook after the fact doesn’t help him in any way. Akira’s two remaining pawns are clear to the end of the board, and Goro is left with his king and a bishop, not very useful to him late game. 

Respectfully, he  _ should  _ forfeit. 

Akira sacrifices his final pawn to take Goro’s bishop piece, and…

Goro holds on for a while, he waits for Akira to come to him and corner him rather than take the honorable way out. It feels wrong to, the atmosphere feels like it’ll snap if Akira doesn’t get to have an absolute victory. No what ifs in any of the ways it could’ve played out, something unquestionable. 

“Checkmate,” Akira says, quiet. 

Goro’s coffee is cold when he downs the rest of it. 

And then he picks up his king piece from the board, and he hands it to Akira. 

“I know,” Akira blurts. 

Goro shoots him a panicked look, knowing his phone sits in his pocket, bugged, knowing that Shido’s eyes are everywhere they could be anywhere. He’s not safe, if Akira says what he thinks he’s going to say then they’re both doomed. 

“That...you have freckles,” Akira amends, sheepishly. “And your hair is curly. Your makeup sort of rubbed off in the bath, and I saw the ends of your hair start to curl.” 

“I see.” 

“Do you need glasses? I see you squint sometimes.” 

“I do. I wear contacts.” 

“Ah, makes sense.” Akira nods. 

They look at one another for a loaded moment in which Goro is waiting for the confrontation. For something, anything. He’s waiting for Akira to start yelling, or to challenge him, or do anything at all. Goro is not expecting understanding here, not after what’s supposed to happen. 

And then Akira just presses the king piece back into his hand. 

“Give this back to me, the next time we meet,” he says. 

But there’s so much more to it than just that. Honestly, Goro doesn’t know exactly what’s contained in that confusing bundle of words, but he doesn’t really have any other choice than to accept it. 

“Next time we see one another...perhaps I won’t wear makeup,” he responds carefully.

“I’d love to see your full face of freckles, I’ve always thought they’re rather cute.” 

Goro’s heart seizes in the worst way, and he feels like he might throw up. Or cry. Perhaps both. 

So it’s love, is it? 

The unattainable feeling that Goro has never known, and will probably never get to know, now. 

Akira may live through tomorrow, but Goro isn’t so sure that he will. He isn’t sure that he can walk out of that room the same person, or that he can walk out of that room and not be torn to pieces within days by Shido. Or by himself. 

Goro doesn’t know what waits for him, everything ahead of him is unknown when it’s been so sure for so long. He doesn’t know what tomorrow holds. 

Tomorrow, what a concept. It’ll be tomorrow in an hour. The sun will rise on the day that Akira dies a few hours after that. Tomorrow, they go into the Palace, things play out, and then Goro murders the man he loves. Tomorrow will never really even come, because tomorrow it'll be today, and the day after that will become the new tomorrow. 

Is that how Goro can justify what he'll have to do? Something as childish as hoping for no tomorrow? 

“I’m sorry, that this has to be now,” Akira murmurs. 

Goro wants to open the chess board back up again, but their game feels over for once. He wants to ask for more coffee, but that also feels so far from the expectations here. He wants more, he wants more reasons to be here, but he can’t find any. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, he doesn’t know what to grasp for. 

“That  _ what  _ has to be now?” Goro asks, sickly sweet and pleasant as always.    
He doesn’t know what else to be right now. 

“Tomorrow is its own entity,” Akira whispers. “Isn’t it? Tomorrow is scaring me right now, but...it’s still today. There’s still tonight. And just tonight, I really want you to stay. I want you to be here when it’s tomorrow.” 

Goro thinks Akira is crying, but he can’t see. He’s closed his eyes so he doesn’t have to see, so he doesn’t have to face Akira. 

_ No,  _ he practices in his head.  _ No. I can’t. No, we can’t. No, that’s not how we are.  _

He opens his mouth, and he says, “Kurusu, we’re past that.” 

Because outright refusal will feel like a lie, and Akira will see through that. Not to mention how much he wants to accept, or hope, or…

Goro is used to not getting what he wants, so all he has to do is deny this, now. That’s it, then he won’t want anything else, he can focus on his revenge plot he doesn’t even want to go through with anymore. Follow through on one last commitment. 

“Akechi,” Akira shoots right back. 

“Don’t do this to me right now.” 

“Then when? When are we going to do it?” 

Goro smooths his hands over his face, pushes his hair back, and he considers just leaving. Reconsiders, then goes to the bathroom. 

He sets his gloves aside, and washes his face to the best of his ability. He takes his contacts out, and it’s already late so his hair is curling up anyway. He can’t see very well now, but it’s just this light blur that softens the reaches of his vision, it’s not like his vision has ever been bad, just enough to be noticeable without contacts. 

He goes back to join Akira, sliding back into the booth across from him with nothing left. He feels empty. 

“So?” Akira prods. 

Goro hates himself, and that’s a truth he’s come to terms with. 

He doesn’t know what Akira sees when he looks at him, but whatever it is is somehow worth loving. He doesn’t know if he sees what Akira sees when he looks at himself, he doesn’t know if that’s something that’s possible. 

Goro doesn’t know if he’ll be able to understand that before it’s too late, he doesn’t know...anything, right now. He doesn’t deserve that look Akira is giving him, full of affection and hope. 

But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to take what he can get for now. His phone is still sitting on the table between them, looming like a silent threat of what this means for Goro once it’s over. 

For once, he can’t even bring himself to care. Who cares what Shido sees, what he thinks of him? 

Right now, all that matters to Goro is that he’s showing himself to Akira, that they can really see one another with nothing holding them back. For as long as they have left. 

“I’ll stay, just until tomorrow.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!  
> If you did like this, feel free to come talk to me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Elsey_8)


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